Is Obama stuck in the 80s?

posted at 12:45 pm on November 22, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

“I personally came of age during the Reagan presidency,” Barack Obama wrote in his first book The Audacity of Hope, and Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl wonders whether Obama hopped a DeLorean DMC-12 equipped with flux capacitor from that time directly to the present, at least in terms of foreign policy. Obama now wants to push hard for a treaty that addresses a Soviet nuclear threat that no longer exists, and at the same time has disrupted what little progress stood to be made in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by pressing for construction freezes in areas that hadn’t really been in serious dispute until Obama’s intervention. Obama’s world view appears trapped in a Cold War paradigm last relevant 20 years ago:

For help understanding the foreign policy headlines of the past week, let’s return, briefly, to the spring of 1983, when Barack Obama was a student at Columbia University. What were the burning international issues of that time?

Well, first was the “nuclear freeze” movement, which was prompting mass demonstrations around the world by people worried about the standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States. Obama published an article about it in a campus magazine in which he invoked the vision of “a nuclear free world.”

The Middle East, meanwhile, was still reeling from the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon – which was the apotheosis of the Zionist right’s dream of creating a “greater Israel” including all of the Palestinian West Bank.

So has nothing changed in the past quarter-century? In fact, almost everything has – especially when it comes to nuclear arms control and Israel’s national objectives. What hasn’t changed, it seems, is Barack Obama – who has led his administration into a foreign policy time warp that is sapping its strength abroad and at home.

In March of this year, while Obama negotiated the START treaty, I made the same point. Russian nukes are a considerable problem, but mostly for the Russians, who can’t afford the necessary modernization efforts it will take to maintain its massive deterrent. Verification of a reduction in missiles is desirable, but far less critical than when the Soviet Union aimed them at the US. Russia is much more of an economic and diplomatic adversary than a military enemy, and the reason the Russians want this treaty so badly is to be able to compete better on the economic field.

We have other, more pressing issues than Russian nukes, not the least of which are the Iranian effort to get its own nukes and the new North Korean uranium-enrichment plant that will add to theirs. In the face of those threats, rapidly reducing the deterrents in the US and Russia may not be the smartest strategy to play. In addition, the new treaty puts up more barriers to the missile-defense systems that would allow us to protect the US and its allies against rogue nations with small numbers of nukes and the missile technology to launch them.

Israel is another example of this Forward to the Past mentality. The Israelis have acknowledged the necessity of a two-state solution and have withdrawn from Gaza and Lebanon. In return, Israelis in the south and the north have missiles rained down on their heads from the regions where Israelis withdrew. The problem in finding peace isn’t the construction of apartments around Jerusalem but the lack of a serious partner for peace from the Palestinian side. Obama made this problem worse by insisting on a construction freeze in areas where even the Palestinians didn’t demand one as a prerequisite for talks and all but ignoring the continuing provocations of Hamas and Hezbollah — both funded and directed by Iran.

It seems that Obama the college student wants to prove that he made a better President than Ronald Reagan. Reagan, however, addressed the actual pressing issues of his own time. It’s akin to having Reagan invade Vietnam to prove he could have run the war better than LBJ and Richard Nixon.

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If he’s THAT out of touch, we are going to have serious problems with this guy until we can give him the boot. No wonder he seems incapable of believing in tax cuts affecting the economy. Thanks Media for greasing the skids in order to get this fool into office.

The Middle East, meanwhile, was still reeling from the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon – which was the apotheosis of the Zionist right’s dream of creating a “greater Israel” including all of the Palestinian West Bank.

No, they just got tired of the PLO hold up in there and trying to kill them.

He sees the 80′s (as do other Progressive Ruling Classers) as a time of great excess. Americans’ are pillaging and destroying the worlds resources we must all stop this exploitation of the world and it’s resources.

In Obama……AMERICA IS GOING TO HAVE IT’S CHICKENS COME HOME TO WOOST (one way or a freaking other).

Why did he jump into the Israel/Palestinian issue in the first place? Nothing significant had changed since the last failure and he had nothing new or original to bring to the table. I don’t buy that he’s a bumbling idiot like Biden. There’s a reason for his “madness”. What is it?

I want to throw in a little editing note that struck me as I saw this sentence:

“I personally came of age during the Reagan presidency,” Barack Obama wrote in his first book The Audacity of Hope

I’ve never read the Obama/Ayers book, but the phrasing struck me as odd with the redundant use of personally. Can you come of age impersonally? When you speak of yourself how can it be anything other that personal?

“I came of age during the Reagan presidency,” would have made more sense and had more punch.

Great Giggawatts Marty!!!
We got to get the Kenyan to the clocktower!!!

abobo on November 22, 2010 at 12:56 PM

Still drives me crazy how they mispronounced Giga-watts in that movie. For those that don’t understand, “Giga-watts” is correctly pronounced with a HARD “G” as in “giggle”. Instead it somehow ended up pronounced with a soft “g” that sounds like a “j”, as in “jiggle”.

So yeah, if you grew up in the ’80′s you may very well have been pronouncing it incorrectly for 25 years. Thanks Doc Brown!

I know the guy is immature but wasn’t he about 20 when Reagan was elected?

JammieWearingFool on November 22, 2010 at 1:08 PM

To Obama “coming of age” is sometime after you are 26, working for a non-profit and telling dissatisfied people why they should rabblerouse to squeeze more allowance from their paternalistic government.

reminds me of an interview I saw with BO during the run up to his election. When he was asked how he felt about his position on the Iraq surge being wrong, BO responded, paraphrasing, that he wasn’t wrong because his idea wasn’t tried.

I found that statement very telling.

Everybody should know by now the left beleives BO is their Reagan, and BO will attempt to undo everything Reagan did and the opposite of Reagan got done.

This, I beleive is why the left is so freaked out about Palin. If Reagan had a political daughter, it would be Sarah.

The Middle East, meanwhile, was still reeling from the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon – which was the apotheosis of the Zionist right’s dream of creating a “greater Israel” including all of the Palestinian West Bank.

If it were the 80′s, both Sam Kinnison and SRV would still be alive. If only.

Bishop on November 22, 2010 at 1:09 PM

I hear ya Bishop, I loved Sam! In fact I was watching a tribute show to Sam last night, it’s called “Back From Hell: A Tribute to Sam Kinnison.”

As for Obama living in the 80′ I’d have to say as others have pointed out I believe he’s living more in the 60′s due to the heavy influence from scumbags such as Ayers, Wright, et al. The marxist/hippies of the 60′s never got their revolution so they got Obama their useful idiot elected to try and accomplish now what they failed to do in the 60′s an 70′s which is to destroy America…

Also, thank the stupid Rs who did, either by voting for him, nor by pouting and not voting…though the alternative was just a tad better. This way the electorate got jolted into reality, in a jiffy. The national scrooming hurts.

Well, I have the DeLorean, minus flux capacitator, so if anyone knows how to build one, then I am up for a donation. We could send BarryO way, way back in time. I can’t think of a better use for “Dee.”

Obama’s world view appears trapped in a Cold War paradigm last relevant 20 years ago

That way he can look busy while avoiding the current world issues like Islamic Terrorism. And to think, people said that Palin has no foreign policy experience. I thought Biden was suppose to be the foreign policy guru that makes Barry look good. What happened to that plan?

Still drives me crazy how they mispronounced Giga-watts in that movie. For those that don’t understand, “Giga-watts” is correctly pronounced with a HARD “G” as in “giggle”. Instead it somehow ended up pronounced with a soft “g” that sounds like a “j”, as in “jiggle”.

Ben Smith’s piece in Politico echoes some of what Captain Ed just said.

“If Obama wanted to be a transformational figure, he would never have led with the settlements,” said Eyal Arad, the architect of Livni’s campaign for prime minister. He argues — like most Israelis — that Obama inadvertently got talks hung up on a matter of irrelevant principle, rather than engaging the reality that some settlements can stay while others must go.

“The settlements were pushed by a bunch of left-wingers who were out of sync with the realities and were out of government too long,” he said. “The irony is that Obama went directly back to the place where George Bush the father left off.” (emphasis added)

Bush to Dr. Brown (Christopher Lloyd): “Doc, are you saying Obama has the hots for me?

Yeah, he came of age in the Left wing, college campus, Alternative Rock, “kill Reagan and Thatcher” culture. That’s EXACTLY who he is. I’m the same age as Obama and have in-laws who are hardcore Left wing academics who were in grad school at the time. Obama is the kind of person that they’d have over their house as the token Black guest for Thanksgiving, amongst a bunch of smug Left wing WASP professors. There would be a New Order record playing in the background while they nibbled on pumpkin pie and discussed the Palestinian genocide.